


Feeling Like I Do (Way Down Here)

by rhiannonhero



Category: As the World Turns
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-03
Updated: 2011-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:04:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhiannonhero/pseuds/rhiannonhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to Alice, Aimee, Newssodark, Jed, Peggin, and Jodie for beta reading this story.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Feeling Like I Do (Way Down Here)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Alice, Aimee, Newssodark, Jed, Peggin, and Jodie for beta reading this story.

Yo’s looks like it always does. There are people playing pool, and some idiots drinking at the bar. The only difference this time is that one of those idiots belongs to Reid.

Luke doesn’t even look startled when Reid sits down beside him. Luke’s eyes are glassy, his face flushed, and his hair a mess, but he doesn’t look anything but pissed off. “I guess he called you, huh?” Luke says nodding at the bartender.

“Nope,” Reid says. It wasn’t the bartender. It had been Casey. Casey who’d dropped by Yo’s for a drink after his shift at the hospital, noticed Luke guzzling alcohol like it was mother’s milk, and made a beeline for the door before Luke had a chance to look up from his drink.

“Yeah, whatever,” Luke says, rolling his eyes. “Whole damn town thinks it can…hey!” Luke calls out, gets up from the stool, and points his finger, wobbling a little on his feet. “Hey, all of you, mind your own damn business,” he shouts to the whole bar.

Everyone looks their way, and then talking ripples through the air again, as everyone goes back to what they were doing, disinterested in the drunk at the bar.

“The usual,” Reid says to the bartender, whose name he should probably know by now. He’s certain that Luke knows it, but Reid’s never bothered.

“So, I guess you’re here to, what? Take me home?”

Reid taps the edge of the glass the bartender sits down in front of him. “I’m here to join you.” Reid clinks his glass against Luke’s half-empty one sitting on the bar and says, “Cheers.”

The liquor burns his throat, but it steadies him, gives him a moment to look Luke over, to observe the color of his skin, the wildness of his eyes.

“So…what? I’m supposed to believe this? That you’re just gonna sit here with me and have a few?” Luke snorts. “Like you’re not even gonna try to stop me.”

Reid looks him up and down. “Looks like I’m a little too late for that.”

Luke throws his head back and downs the rest of his drink, slams it against the bar and gestures at the keep, and says, “Another.” He gives Reid a long, daring look.

“Me, too,” Reid says, draining his glass. “Again.”

“Okay, come on,” Luke says. “Let’s hear it. Let’s hear about how this is going to kill me, and that I’m being selfish, how I’m a terrible disappointment, a bad person—“

“You’re not going to hear that from me,” Reid says.

“Yeah, well, I should,” Luke mutters. “If you had any balls at all, you’d tell me just what you think of me.”

Reid tilts his head and gazes at Luke long enough that Luke flushes darker, his eyes becoming even brighter with rage, and Reid says, “What do you want me to say?”

“The truth! Just say the truth! That I’m a drunk, a loser, that I’m a piece of garbage that should be put out with the trash, that I’m disgusting, and—“

“That it’s your fault that Faith’s in a coma?”

Luke grabs his drink and tosses it back, and then grabs Reid’s and drinks it, too.

Reid narrows his eyes. “Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it Luke?”

“Shut up. It’s your fault just as much as it is mine,” Luke says, his voice sounds like sandpaper, rough with so much rage.

“All the more reason I should be here drinking with you,” Reid says, and pushes the glass out for a refill.

Luke turns on him, ripping into him. “You’re the doctor! She was living in our home! You should have noticed something. You should have known. How could you not know, Reid?”

“I didn’t know,” Reid says.

“It was your prescription pad! Your signature! If not for you—“

“If not for me, she’d be dead.” That was the truth. If he hadn’t shoved the medics out of the way, and relieved the pressure on her brain by trepanning her in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, she’d be dead, and not just likely to be dead tomorrow.

“I can’t believe you,” Luke says. “I can’t even stand looking at you. You make me sick.”

Reid lifts his brows but says nothing.

Luke stares at him, finally saying, “What?”

“You’re a mean drunk.”

Luke’s face twists into a snarl, and he says, “Now you know what it’s like being around an asshole like you all the time. And you don’t even have to be drunk.”

Reid says nothing. Reid isn’t ever going to tell Luke that he feels sick looking at him. It isn’t true and it never will be. But this isn’t Luke – this is Luke’s pain, and Reid knows that.

“So, since we’re drinking to Faith’s health, let’s order another,” Reid says, motioning at the bartender.

Luke seems confused for a moment, but raises the glass to his lips readily enough. Reid’s stomach twists as he watches Luke down another glass of alcohol. Part of him wants to call this off, wrestle Luke out to the car, and force him to the hospital for intravenous hydration to protect his vulnerable kidney.

“To Faith,” Reid says, raising his glass. It is a tough thing to say, a tougher thing to mean, because Reid has been dealing with his own rage the past few days, as he’s watched Luke slide further and further into panic, self-loathing, and depression. He wishes he could see Faith open her eyes, if only to tell her how much he hates her for hurting her brother this way.

But it’s unlikely. Holden and Lily have decided to end the artificial life support tomorrow, and the chances are nearly nonexistent that Faith will last more than a few hours without it.

Reid goes on, “To her cunning skill at theft and forgery. To her blatant disregard for the second chance her brother gave her by letting her stay in our home. To her idiocy in thinking that if two pills felt good, then eight would feel better. To her shrewd—“

“Shut up!” Luke says, slamming his glass down and lunging into Reid’s face. “Just – shut up.”

Reid does just that, and he stares at Luke’s expression, his broken, despairing expression, and he says quietly, “Luke, you’re right. It should never have happened. But it isn’t our fault.”

“Don’t,” Luke says, his lips and chin quivering, and his brown eyes brimming with tears. “Don’t say another word about her.”

“All right, how about I say some words about you?”

“Get away from me,” Luke says, stumbling back, looking around in confusion, as though trying to determine the closest exit.

Reid grabs his arm. “Earlier you were desperate to hear them,” Reid says.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Luke whispers, his body shaking.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Reid says. “But I think I know. So, I’ll tell you: you think that it should have been you.”

“Don’t make it sound like that,” Luke says.

“Like what?”

“Like it’s _pathetic_.”

“It is,” Reid says. “You’re not pathetic. Your pain isn’t pathetic. But that idea, that _lie_ is pathetic.”

“Screw you.”

“Do you know how I know that? Because you gave everything to her, a home when she ran away from your folks, a second chance after rehab, love, affection, money, a job, do I need to go on? You gave her your heart, and she flushed her life away. That, Luke, does not make _you_ pathetic. It makes you great.”

Luke shook his head, bit his lip, and looked down. “Stop.”

“Why? Because if I keep going, maybe you’ll clue in to why you don’t want to be sitting here in this bar with me flushing _your_ life away? Because you’d rather keep on drinking, and taking the blame, because then you’re in control? Guess, what Luke?” Reid says, taking the drink out of Luke’s hands. “Right now, you’re not in control. This is. And I need you to stop. I need you to come home with me.”

“Why?” Luke says, tremulous. “Why would you even want me to?”

“Why wouldn’t I? You think this, just _this_ is enough to make me go away. That’s not who I am, Luke. You know that by now.”

Luke is in his arms, and he’s shaking so hard that Reid doesn’t know if Luke will be able to make it to the car. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know, Reid.”

“Sure you do,” Reid says. “Come home. Tomorrow, you’ll know even more of who you are.”

Luke whispers. “It’s gonna hurt so bad.”

Reid swallows hard. He says, “It will. And we’ll make it through it somehow. Come home with me.”

Luke nods, pulls away, and Reid puts a $100 on the bar, hoping it’s enough. He nods at the bartender who smiles and mouths, “Good luck.”

Reid keeps his hand on Luke’s shoulder, and he helps him into the backseat of the car. Casey is behind the wheel waiting to drive them home. Reid takes a moment before crossing to the opposite side to get in next to Luke. He runs his hand over his face and tries to steady himself.

But whenever Reid closes his eyes he sees Luke on the kitchen floor, cradling Faith’s body, babbling and crying, incoherent with grief. It’s the first time in his life that he hasn’t been able to compartmentalize, to put the adrenaline rush into a box marked “work” and check it off as a satisfactory or unsatisfactory outcome.

Seeing Luke this way, it is a new world of terror for Reid. He looks up at the night sky through the fuzz of the Oakdale street lights. Then he climbs into the car and holds Luke all the way home.

::::

Morning hurts. That’s what Luke knows as he opens his eyes on the day. The sun through the window is like shards of glass gouging into his eyes and the sides of his head. Luke covers his eyes with his hands, but he can’t seem to block the pain out.

“Close the curtains,” Luke mumbles.

“Sorry, Bright Eyes, but I need to be able to see where to stick this needle.”

“What?” Luke says, before he realizes that Reid has his arm in a tourniquet and is getting ready to jab him. “Wait, what—hold on, are you, what are you doing?”

Reid pulls the cap off of the needle with his teeth, his eyes focused on Luke’s inner elbow where his fingers are poking at veins. “Hydration. Your kidney needs it. I can provide it.” Reid slides the needle in and Luke jerks.

“Ow.”

“Surgeon. Not a nurse,” Reid says, monitoring the vein carefully. “It’s fine, though. Okay, about twenty minutes with this drip and another in a few hours, and I’ll feel better about the chances of an infection setting up.”

“Reid—“ Luke says, his throat dry and his mouth gross. He glances up at the bag hanging from the metal hook that Reid must have brought home from the hospital. The liquid as it drips down the tube is clear, and Luke feels how cold it is as it enters his arm.

Reid turns his back, disposing of the needle and putting away the tourniquet and his stethoscope. Luke wonders if Reid was listening to his heart as he slept.

“I guess I made a pretty big ass of myself”.

“Yep,” Reid says, and Luke’s chilled by the lack of commitment in Reid’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” Luke says.

Reid puts his bag down by the bed and says, “For what? For endangering your life? No big deal, right?”

“Reid,” Luke says, his throat aching, and wanting to stop what’s coming. “Please.”

“What’s your life in the scheme of things?” Reid looks up at the ceiling, and then back down at Luke with a penetrating glare. “Oh, that’s right, _everything_. I guess it _is_ a big deal after all. And to think I was going to just blow it off.”

“Are you angry?” Luke asks.

“What kind of question is that?” Reid says.

“So you are angry.”

Reid says, “I feel confident in saying that there would be something very wrong in our relationship if I wasn’t. I’ve been given to believe that giving a crap about the health and well-being of your significant other is, generally, considered a good thing.” Reid looks at him then, his eyes pouring into Luke, full of emotions that Reid rarely speaks aloud. Reid sighs and says, “I’m angry. But I understand.”

Luke is quiet for a moment and then says, “How’s Faith?”

“They turned the support off at 7:00 a.m.,” Reid replies. “Your mom and dad are with her.”

Luke feels a shot of pain that arcs from his head to his toes, and he can’t breathe for a moment, but then he’s sitting up, pushing the covers back, and trying to climb out of bed. “I should be with them. I need to be there. Mom and Dad need me, they shouldn’t be alone, they—“

Reid pushes him back onto the bed. “Oh, no you don’t,” he says, and he doesn’t sound at all playful. “Back in bed.”

Luke’s stomach is reeling and his chest is aching so deeply that he doesn’t think he can stand it, but he’s got to get to the hospital before Faith goes. He needs to say goodbye. “Reid, I have to – I really need to—“

“They don’t want you there, Luke,” Reid says.

“Because…it’s my fault? Because they’re angry?” Luke says, disbelieving and utterly certain at once.

“No,” Reid says, his voice gentler than Luke ever hears it when they aren’t having sex. “Because they’re her parents. It’s their right.”

Luke doesn’t even know how to experience what he’s feeling. The room is too hot, too cold, and overly loud and bright. Even the air molecules are louder than he can stand, and the sensation of the sheets on his skin is like fire. He wants to move, to leave, to swallow down a bottle of liquor and hope that it kills him, and then last night washes over him in a wave of memory, the things he said to Reid, the way he’d behaved, throwing up as soon as they’d gotten out of Casey’s car, and the way the pain had only dulled into a rage that had felt unquenchable.

Reid touches Luke’s cheek, and Luke turns to him, but he doesn’t want comfort, he wants something else, something harder and more useful. He wants time to move backwards, for him to not take that last phone call on the way out the door, to get home an hour and a half earlier, to find Faith in time, to never walk in and see her on the kitchen floor with blood and foam running out of her mouth, and claw marks on her skin from where she’d scratched at her own face.

“I wanted her to be happy,” Luke says. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Reid sits down next to him on the bed and says nothing.

“Why wasn’t she happy?”

“I don’t know,” Reid says slowly.

“Mom and Dad, they…they did their best,” Luke says, and he keeps his eyes averted from Reid, because he doesn’t want Reid to know how much Luke doesn’t believe that, how much he knows _Reid_ doesn’t believe it either. “But Faith doesn’t understand how complicated things are. I mean, it’s hard. You know, when your parents are breaking up and getting back together for most of your life, it’s confusing.”

“Yep,” Reid says, but it’s not flippant, just it is what it is.

“And then after she got out of rehab, I really thought,” Luke says, shaking his head, staring at the wall in front of him, his mind taking the long way to what he won’t be able to avoid. “You know, I thought she was doing better, that she just needed some stability, some time.”

Reid nods. Luke’s told him this all before. He’d told Reid this during the five hundred conversations that it took to convince Reid to let Faith take the spare bedroom for awhile. He told Reid how she just needed to be away from the endless drama of their parents, to be in a home with stable authority figures, and with people who could be counted on to have her best interests at heart. Reid had said, “And that’s us? Since when?” Luke’s reply was, “Since now.”

“But, it wasn’t enough, I guess. I mean, she was stealing your prescription pads, getting drugs for herself, just…throwing it all away.”

Luke flashes on a memory of the night before, Reid saying that Faith had flushed her life down the drain, and that Luke flushing his down the drain wasn’t going to make it any more Luke’s fault, no matter how badly he wanted it to be.

“I need to tell Mary,” Luke says, thinking suddenly of the elderly woman who was in charge of the janitorial crew at The Foundation’s offices. Luke had requested that she take Faith on as an employee based on Faith’s rehab counselor’s suggestion that some good, honest work might teach Faith some valuable lessons about life.

“Who now?” Reid asks.

“Never mind,” Luke says, covering his mouth with his hand, holding back the weird sensation of a scream building in his chest. “Do you think it hurts? Do you think she’s scared?”

“I don’t know,” Reid says.

“Do you think she’s gone yet?”

“Your mom said she’d call.”

“I’m sorry about what I said to you last night,” Luke says, a thick sense of shame mixing in on top of the breathtaking pain clutching at his chest. “I didn’t mean it.”

Reid’s eyes narrow and he says, “In vino veritas.”

“No,” Luke whispers. “In vino lies.”

The sun is still too bright, but the emotional pain has blocked out the physical, and Luke wishes he could go back to sleep, wake up, and this be not real.

“You have to believe me,” Luke says.

Reid reaches out and touches Luke’s face, his eyes sad and tired. “Luke, we live together. We have a life together. We’ll make it through this. And, in the meantime, you’ll have toast.”

“Toast?” Luke whispers.

“Dry toast. Think you can keep that down?”

Luke shrugs.

Reid nods. “Okay. I’ll be back. Stay in bed, and if you have to take a piss, call me, and I’ll carry the drip so that you can go.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Luke murmurs, but he’s hurting too much for it to sound sincere.

Reid gets up, walks to the doorway, where he pauses and looks at Luke carefully, like Luke’s going to disappear at any moment, and he finally says, “It’s going to hurt for a long time, Luke.”

Luke nods. He feels the cold creeping into him from the drip bag and he shivers.

Reid nods toward the covers and says, “Cover up. I’ll bring something warm to drink.” He turns to go out the door again, but apparently changes his mind, because he stalks over to Luke, grabs a handful of his hair, and kisses him hard. He pulls back just far enough that Luke can see his eyes and says, “Never scare me again.”

Luke whispers, “I won’t.”

It’s a promise he hopes to keep.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Author's Notes:** I started this story back in August or September, and I wrote these scenes in a big burst of inspiration. I specifically set out to write something that explored how Reid would handle a drunk Luke. I wanted Reid to see that Luke's a mean drunk, and to see how Reid would cope in comparison to how Noah did it (i.e. not very well, imo, but who is surprised by that?) So, then I had to come up with a _reason_ Luke would drink if he had Reid in his life, and this is what I came up with. I thought for the last six months that there would be more of this story, and I even had little fits of blurbs written, but nothing more than a paragraph or two, and I finally, finally have realized that I think that _this_ was all this story was meant to be anyway. There's nothing stopping me from changing my mind later if inspiration strikes. So, I'm posting it now. Here's hoping Luke keeps his promise. I think, with Reid there, he will.


End file.
